Dear Dad,

Just thought you’d like to know I’m getting on with your jumper. I find knitting really relaxing even though Ade and Jase kill themselves every time they see me doing it. I won’t share with them next year. They’re not fully developed humans.

I’d like to come and visit during reading week. I can get to you Nov. 11th and stay till 18th. If that’s okay?

Here are some snaps of Mum wearing scarves. You’re right, it does sound rather odd. But then, you are rather odd.

Just kidding!!

Hope to see you in November.

Love, Tom.

P.S. Hope you’re getting on OKAY.

“Getting on okay,” I mutter grimly, mashing rusk into warm milk. “Hmm.”

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In the evening I collect Althea and give her the scarf. She puts it on, draping it with casual flair around her shoulders, where it seems to fade, become old and inconsequential. But it disturbs me all the same, seeing it on her. Resisting all offers of help, she maneuvers herself and her canes into the car.

At seven o’clock about thirty souls come tramping into the church, along with the choir, who take their positions without any cue from me. “Dearly beloved brethren,” I begin in a loud voice, reciting the words I have known by heart for thirty years. We have erred, and strayed from thy ways as lost sheep, my congregation joins me in saying, and they know what that means, these people who have come out tonight from the hills and farms. Oh God, make speed to save us: as I call out, so do they vigorously respond, Oh Lord, make haste to help us. The service comes to a close. “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us all evermore,” I declaim, and I might be praying before a breaking sea, so drawn-out and reverberating is the final “Amen.”

“They can do it by themselves,” I remark to Althea as I run her home.

“They had to.”

“Blakemore?”

“Blakemore.”

We bid each other good night.

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